No evidence to back demand for costly studies

The La Jolla Community Fireworks Foundation and La Jolla’s Fourth of July fireworks celebration have been under siege for the past year by one Encinitas attorney who has determined that he alone should decide when, where and how San Diegans celebrate Independence Day. His claims are refuted by good science, but his threats last year led to the cancellation of the San Diego Bay New Year’s Eve fireworks and have threatened to end Fourth of July shows because of the crushing costs of litigation. For us, the issue has become defining and has hit a national nerve because of the tragic loss of common sense and the uneasy feeling that important traditions are under siege and may be lost for the sake of misguided agendas.

Once-per-year fireworks displays like ours do not pose a risk to the ocean. The California Regional Water Quality Control Board, which administers the Clean Water Act, recently issued a discharge permit for fireworks that states, “Fireworks discharges require no treatment systems ... and pose no significant threat to water quality.” State regulators studied several years of data from SeaWorld and concluded, “It is unlikely that single fireworks events of a smaller size than SeaWorld’s Fourth of July and Labor Day events would cause exceedances of applicable water quality criteria.” This conclusion makes sense given the decades of major fireworks shows over water bodies across the country in New York, Boston, San Francisco and even the Potomac River, on the doorstep of the EPA, which has expressed no concerns in the 40 years that the Clean Water Act has been on the books.

The federal government even evaluated fireworks on marine mammals at coastal locations in Northern California and similarly concluded that firework displays can co-exist with the marine environment and should be limited to no more than 20 displays annually per location and should not exceed 30 minutes (although some events could last one hour). The La Jolla show lasts 20-25 minutes and is followed by a thorough cleanup. Our community takes environmental issues seriously. We are surfers, swimmers, fishermen, kayakers and conservationists, and our cultural identity is tied to our coastal resources and their sensible use. If there were evidence of real harm, our community would be the first to propose solutions.

Our opponent claims to have spent $400,000 in legal fees trying to shut down our La Jolla celebration and openly asked for $200,000 in taxpayer money to drop the case. The lawsuits against the city and our foundation have become nothing more than a meandering search for a problem. Our opponent’s mantra is that we need to complete extensive environmental studies, but he understands that these would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and would provide him further lawsuit opportunities to suffocate our patriotic celebration under the sheer cost, delay and weight of litigation. All the money we raise goes toward our community fireworks. Given our nonprofit’s $30,000 annual budget, cobbled together entirely from community donations, our struggle would have been lost in 2010 had the mayor, the City Council and the San Diego community not responded so strongly in support of our show and a team of lawyers from Latham & Watkins not donated their services to defend us.

Bodies Under Siege Part I: Christ as symbol & beauty in the pain ...

I am currently reading Bodies Under Siege: Self-Mutilation and Body Modification in Culture and Psychiatry by Armando R. Favazza, M.D. It is the first comprehensive attempt at dealing with the subject of self-mutilation from a cultural psychiatric perspective. I am only about 20 pages in, but I already feel that this man has understood the concept of self-mutilation not only from a cultural and ritual perspective but from the perspective of a mentally ill person.

Many people, knowing either vaguely or intimately my personal belief systems and practices as a witch, question and frown upon my use of a crucifix in my practices, and the fact that I often wear one when I am in a particularly bad “demonic” phase. The fact is I take great comfort in aligning myself with the voluntary self-mutilation that the mythic image of Christ allowed to be imposed upon himself. The crux of Christian myth is based around this voluntary sacrifice, but the issue for me is not sacrifice for another but identification with excruciating internal and external pain.